CD Projekt Red may have its hands full with The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2, but a newly surfaced job listing has offered a rare glimpse into the studio’s most enigmatic endeavor: Project Hadar, the company’s first entirely original intellectual property. The posting, seeking an engineering director, describes the game as an immersive, emotional open-world experience — language that suggests the Polish developer intends Hadar to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with its two flagship franchises.
The job advertisement, first highlighted by GamesRadar and analyzed by Rock Paper Shotgun, asks candidates to help “push the envelope for the next, immersive game in the Hadar world, creating an emotional, open-world experience that will stay with gamers.” Combined with earlier listings that hinted at action-RPG mechanics and melee combat, a picture is slowly forming of a game that may not stray too far from the studio’s well-established formula — despite being set in an entirely new universe.
Still, much about Hadar remains unknown. CD Projekt has not revealed whether the project is set in a fantasy, science-fiction, or contemporary world, nor whether it will be a purely single-player affair or incorporate multiplayer elements. The studio has, however, gone on record ruling out one oddly specific possibility: it is not a cosmic horror game set in feudal Japan. As IGN notes, early conceptual work began in late 2021, but the project is currently described as being in “early pre-development,” with just 24 people assigned to it.
That skeleton crew stands in stark contrast to the resources devoted to CD Projekt’s other projects. According to the company’s most recent financial report, 513 developers are working on The Witcher 4, 163 on Cyberpunk 2, and 83 on Sirius, the multiplayer-focused Witcher spin-off. Joint-CEO Michał Nowakowski reinforced Hadar’s nascent status during a 2025 earnings call, describing it as still fundamentally an IP concept rather than a full game development effort, with the team focused on story, world-building, and early gameplay prototyping.
How Hadar will fit into CD Projekt’s already packed roadmap is an open question. The studio has laid out an ambitious plan to release The Witcher 4, 5, and 6 within a six-year window, alongside Cyberpunk 2 and a recently announced expansion for The Witcher 3. With so many large-scale projects competing for attention and resources, Hadar likely remains years away from any formal reveal — let alone a release date.
Nonetheless, the mere existence of Hadar signals significant ambition. After nearly two decades spent building games within the worlds of The Witcher and Cyberpunk, CD Projekt is betting it can create a wholly original franchise capable of generating the same kind of devoted following. Whether that bet pays off won’t be clear for some time, but for now, each cryptic job listing keeps the speculation alive.